Step 6: Scoring and baking

Step 7: Books, links and stuff

Here some very good books about baking bread.(Not ordered after preference...) Bread by Jeffrey Hamelmann The Bread Baker's Apprentice by Peter Rein...

Step 4: Kneading the dough

4-6 hours before i intend to bake, i add the other half of the flour and the salt. You can mix it with your hands or take your mixer with the kneading hooks.
After incorporating all the ingredients, the dough needs to be kneaded properly. When you do it by hand, it will take around 10-15 minutes. Using a hand mixer with kneading hooks or a KitchenAid or Kenwood type of machine, it it takes around 5-7 minutes.
When you overdo the kneading, the dough will go from springy to slack pretty quickly and you need to start over with a new dough. It is very unlikely to overknead it manually, with a machine, it can happen easily.
As you can see on the pictures, i use a bread maker to mix, ferment the preferment, add the remaining ingredients, knead and ferment again. This way i only need one container with integrated mixing and kneading hook and it is covered while fermenting. The only task i don't use the bread maker, is for baking.